Post
by mistral » Wed Oct 17, 2007 1:15 am
Fascinating to read everyone's thoughts on what skills have been lost. Things like cooking, knitting and sewing are now leisure pursuits, nobody needs to do them anymore and I suppose that has to be an improvement? My mother hated knitting and sewing (would much rather have her nose in a book) but she knitted all the jerseys and cardigans for me and my three sisters until we were well into our teens and wouldn't wear hand knits any more! She also taught us all to use the sewing machine but she really didn't like using it herself!
When I was at primary school, girls learned to knit and sew while boys did handwork, which I thought grossly unfair, I would much rather have made a basket or a balsa wood aeroplane! Still I did learn to knit and sew and also remember the bleeding fingers and stitches so tight you couldn't move them along the needles. Later on I made clothes for myself and also for my children when they were small although my mother in law was a much better dressmaker and knitter so it was often easier just to let her get on with it!! Now you can buy things so cheaply, it's not worth making them but I must admit to knitting a small cardigan for my first little grandchild this year although I knew he would probably never wear it but I just felt compelled to do it anyway as that's what Grannies are supposed to do, isn't it? My Dundee Gran Ross knitted beautiful Shetland shawls for all her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren which were like works of art, but nobody uses things like that any more, you can't throw them in the washing machine unfortunately!
As for cooking, like most people of my generation, I was brought up on good plain cooking. In the 1950's. my father was the headmaster in a two teacher country primary school which had a large school garden where he taught the boys gardening as well as cultivating the schoolhouse garden to provide us with all our fruit and vegetables throughout the year. Don't see many folk doing that nowadays but, if I remember correctly, when council houses were being built in Scotland, was it not a condition that they all had to have a garden big enough for a family to grow their own produce? Now it seems that children often don't even know where milk comes from or that chips are made from potatoes, let alone that fruit and vegetables are grown from seeds! How soon things change!!
Can't in all honesty say that I never frequent Marks and Spencer's ready meal section but I do still make soup (often using a chicken carcass to make stock) and all the usual stuff like mince and tatties, doughballs etc but have not made chips for years! Do go to the Anstruther Fish Bar regularly though! When my husband and I were bringing up our children we grew all sorts of fruit and vegetables including potatoes which lasted us through the winter but moving to a house with a smaller garden put paid to that! Still usually do still make a few pots of jam each year as well, that was another thing my mother had to do which she was not that keen on, she had to make dozens of pots of jam each year with the fruit from the garden. Of course, the favourites like strawberry and raspberry ran out first and we were always left with loads of gooseberry which I didn't much like! Still it was better than nothing which was the only alternative!
Another thing I remember from my childhood was cleaning out the grate and setting and lighting the fire, this would have been from about 8 or 9 years old, also chopping sticks for the fire using a great big axe! Nowadays, I suppose parents would be reported to the social services but it was just part of family life in the 1950's. Same as running errands and looking after your younger siblings. Also had to peel potatoes and prepare vegetables using sharp knives!!! Never seemed to cut myself though!
Think I'd better stop now, I am only in my 50's but am beginning to feel like Methuselah.................and yes, I do watch that Grumpy Old Woman programme and I definitely am just like them!!!
Sylvia
Researching Mentiply, Graham, Johnston, Gettings in Fife and Lanarkshire. Ross, McLeish, Callan, Whyte in Dundee, Cromarty and Ayrshire.
I couldn't do that!! 
